Technical Field
Technology disclosed herein relates to an attachment structure for a vehicle drive battery.
Related Art
In an attachment structure for a battery mechanism described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2005-247063, a pair of left and right side members (rear side members) provided at a rear section of a vehicle respectively include upward curving kick-up sections, and front portions of the left and right kick-up sections are coupled together by a cross member. A front portion of a battery pack is fixed to the cross member by a front portion bracket. A rear portion of the battery pack is fixed to upper faces of the side members at rear portions of the kick-up sections by a bridge provided to couple the left and right side members together.
In the battery mechanism attachment structure configured as described above, when the vehicle is involved in a collision from behind (referred to below as a rear-end collision), the kick-up sections deform upward when the side members are input with load along a vehicle front-rear direction, and the rear portion of the battery pack moves upward relative to the kick-up sections. This suppresses transmission of collision load to the battery pack, suppressing damage to the battery pack.
Note that in what are known as plug-in hybrid vehicles and the like, sometimes a high capacity battery is installed in a luggage area at the vehicle rear of the vehicle cabin. Such batteries are, for example, set with large dimensions in the vehicle front-rear direction, and are disposed over a broad region from the vicinity of a front end portion to the vicinity of a rear end portion of the luggage area. When such a battery is fixed to left and right rear side members, the left and right rear side members deform less readily in a rear-end collision, and crash stroke could conceivably be insufficient. It is also conceivable that a deformation amount of the vehicle cabin could increase were such a battery to undergo heavy displacement toward the vehicle front side with respect to the vehicle body due to collision load.